SET IN STONE
color, proportion and design. The knowledge of laying up stone, acquired mostly by
trial and error, passed from one generation
of African-American masons to the next. It
is still on the job today.
Chapel Hill, observing its bicentennial,
commissioned a set of gateway monuments
built at the major entrances to town. He
built the wall on U.S. 15-501 South at
Mount Carmel Church Road. Alfred Bar-bee Jr., David Jones and Richard Johnson
built the others. Each of these masons came
from a family of masons long known for
their work in Chapel Hill, and each has
worked on campus.
Building with stone is personal, Smith
says, and he can look at a wall and tell you
who built it. “Each mason has his own
style, and people look at rocks in different
ways. I can take a rock and put it in a wall,
Clockwise from far left:
William “Smitty” Smith
sits atop his work at
the Eve Marie Carson
Garden; a dry-stacked
wall along the east
side of the arboretum
is one of the oldest
on campus; the east
entrance to campus;
Jill Coleman ’ 76, the
landscape architect
who watches over
current wall construction, on the Franklin
Street wall she encountered soon after she
arrived as a freshman.
